At about 7 on Saturday night, Jeff Robison and Grace Goddard had just finished exchanging wedding vows, standing on the upper terrace of the Natural History Museum of Utah in Salt Lake City’s eastern foothills while 160 of their family and friends looked on.

Though the Bonneville Fire was spreading to the north, the couple hadn’t heard any sirens nor paid attention to what was going on around them. After the “I do’s,” though, they saw a helicopter ready to drop water fly by and heard a staffer say urgently, “Everyone off the terrace.”

The bride, groom and guests scurried down to the main lobby, where the tables were decorated exquisitely with flowers arranged all around.

Within an hour, museum staffers, at the direction of the fire department, issued a new mandate: Everybody out.

What were they to do?

Some quick-thinking guests put their heads together and found an alternate venue nearby — the Garden Park Ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Yale Avenue. The picturesque building and surrounding grounds are often used for wedding receptions but were free that night.

Robison got on the museum’s loudspeaker and told everyone to reconvene in an hour at the historic meetinghouse, which they all did.

“I’m pretty sure every single one of our guests came to Garden Park,” Goddard says. “They had worked together to re-create the whole wedding layout from the museum on the lawn — complete with table decorations, seating arrangements and extra lights.”

On their way to the new site, the couple stopped at a Top Spot convenience store and gas station for a Diet Coke, wondering what they would find at the church, she says. But they were delighted to find that everyone was “willing to pivot” and even seemed to enjoy being “part of the action.”

The newlyweds then “made a grand entrance,” Goddard says, “and everyone cheered when we walked in.”

And the caterer, The Blended Table, she says, even made sure the meals were still warm.

Robison is a Latter-day Saint, and Goddard is Catholic.

“A large part of our relationship is blending faiths and families,” the happy bride says. “The fact that everyone came together — especially the guests and the vendors — was awesome.”

Besides, Robison says, disrupting a wedding dims compared to the dangers from a spreading wildfire.

And what was initially scary, the couple say, turned out to be more memorable than they could have imagined.

There was, however, one casualty: The wedding cake didn’t make it to the new location intact. It got dropped in the confusion.

The couple did receive some consolation. The museum said Monday that they were issued a full refund of their rental fees and given a museum membership.

“It was the least we could do,” marketing manager Mark Johnston said, “given the unfortunate turn of events on their special day.”